[AlotOfReading]

Waymo's current operational area in the bay runs from Sunnyvale to fisherman's wharf. I don't know how many people that is, but I'm pretty comfortable calling it a big chunk of the bay.

They don't run to SFO because SF hasn't approved them for airport service.

[kccqzy]

I just opened the Waymo app and its service certainly doesn't extend to Sunnyvale. I just recently had an experience where I got a Waymo to drive me to a Caltrain station so I can actually get to Sunnyvale.

[AlotOfReading]

The public area is SF to Daly City. The employee-only area runs down the rest of the peninsula. Both of them together are the operational area.

Waymo's app only shows the areas accessible to you. Different users can have different accessible areas, though in the Bay area it's currently just the two divisions I'm aware of.

[riffraff]

Why would you consider the employee-only area? For that categorization to exist it must mean it's either unreliable for customers or too expensive cause there's too much human drivers on the loop. Either way it would not be considered as an area served by self driving, imo.

[AlotOfReading]

There are alternative possibilities, like "we don't have enough vehicles to serve this area appropriately" or "we don't have statistical power to ensure this area meets safety standards even though it looks fine", and "there are missing features (like freeways) that would make public service uncompetitive in this area" to simply "the CPUC hasn't approved a fare area expansion".

It's an area they're operating legally, so it's part of their operational area. It's not part of their public service area, which I'd call that instead.

[modeless]

I wish! In Palo Alto the cars have been driving around for more than a decade and you still can't hail one. Lately I see them much less often than I used to, actually. I don't think occasional internal-only testing qualifies as "operational".